379.
After Zhang Hui departed, a brief stillness settled around the camp.
Beyond that quiet, Park Seong-jin's breathing remained a beat slower and deeper than everyone else's.
A red afterglow of the battlefield still lingered in his eyes.
Song Yi-sul took the first step forward.
"Seong-jin. This isn't something to speak about here. Come with me."
His voice was lower and firmer than usual.
Park Seong-jin rose without a word. His steps looked steady, yet they failed to fully anchor to the ground, wavering ever so slightly.
Song Yi-sul felt it at once.
"…This is serious."
Without another word, he grasped Seong-jin's arm and led him deep into the camp, to a small hut few even among their comrades could find.
It was dark and quiet, barely touched by lamplight.
Song Yi-sul closed the door and had Seong-jin kneel.
He spoke.
"I'm sealing your qi. Don't speak. Just follow your breath."
He sat behind Seong-jin and pressed along the points of his spine, one by one—
from the lower back upward, the places where qi rose most easily.
Weizhong. Mingmen. Dazhui.
His hand rested on all three as he murmured,
"Qi stays in the dantian. It does not rise, it does not scatter."
Heat pulsed sharply through Seong-jin's back, as though the battlefield itself were draining out of him.
Song Yi-sul poured qi into his fingertips and pressed deeper.
Seong-jin's body shuddered.
"Hh—!"
He felt it clearly—
the red qi sweeping down from his head to his abdomen, like molten metal cooling as it flowed down the spine.
Song Yi-sul spoke again.
"Listen carefully. Right now, your mind and your qi are overtaking each other.
If the mind wavers first, qi drags you along.
If qi twists first, the mind splits."
He had seen the eyes of those whose ascent had broken them.
That was why his voice was firm.
"Tonight, binding your qi comes first."
Seong-jin inhaled.
The sensation of having two hearts still remained.
Thump. Thump.
The beats misaligned.
Song Yi-sul struck his back lightly.
"Don't tense your body. Sink the breath.
This isn't the time to use qi. It's the time to contain it."
Seong-jin's breathing slowly lengthened.
The reddened sensations gradually subsided.
After watching for a while, Song Yi-sul rose.
"Good. This will hold for tonight."
It was a night when all had fallen asleep.
A black hour without even the sound of wind.
Park Seong-jin sat alone.
The qi Song Yi-sul had sealed was calm, but it wasn't over.
His awareness still trembled faintly.
Shapes were clear, yet distances felt detached.
Voices reached his ears, but meaning failed to fully settle.
It was the dangerous threshold warriors faced when the dantian and Mingmen opened after battle—
reality slipping back by half a step.
If he let himself sink further, an illusion whispered that he might reach what lay beyond.
Seong-jin looked at his hands.
They were clearly his.
And yet, his fingertips felt as though they were being observed by something else.
Is this the boundary that appears as one's state widens?
He recalled the phrase Song Yi-sul repeated often.
The mind settles first. Then qi submits.
He inhaled.
One.
Two.
Three.
As his breath deepened, the line separating reality from unreality aligned itself again.
He spoke quietly to himself.
"…I am Park Seong-jin.
…I am here, now.
…The red qi I saw is mine. It does not consume me."
In that moment, his scattered awareness gathered into a single point.
The darkness before him no longer wavered.
The second heartbeat faded.
The heat in his dantian softened, like dying embers.
Seong-jin finally exhaled.
Huu.
It was a power he would one day have to face.
Tonight, he had barely crossed the threshold without falling.
One thing was certain.
He had already stepped past the point of turning back.
Those who cross it see the end.
That realization weighed heavier on his chest than victory on the battlefield ever had.